Magneto-resistive head thermal asperity digital compensation

Accompanying the MR (magnetoresistive) head is the problem of thermal asperities which can cause unrecoverable errors if improperly compensated. The authors describe inexpensive digital techniques used with a sampling detector that significantly reduce the chances of thermal-asperity-induced unrecoverable errors. Disk file testing with simulated thermal asperities demonstrated a significant reduction of data errors using the ADC (analog-to-digital converter) expanded headroom technique. Use of the timing and gain correction hold scheme showed a reduction of data synchronization failures from thermal asperities. The value of these techniques has been shown in the ability to reduce thermal-asperity-caused error burst lengths to match the error correction code capability of a disk drive